Release Date: January 24, 2003

Rated PG-13 for terror and horror images and brief language

Directed by: Jonathan Liebesman

Starring: Chaney Kley, Emma Caulfield, Joshua Anderson, Andrew Bayly, Emily Browning, Lee Cormie, Peter Curtin, Daniel Daperis, Rebecca McCauley, Kestie Morassi, Steve Mouzakis, Alannah Oliver, Grant Piro, Angus Sampson, Christian Schaeffer, Peter Stanton

Plot:
Kyle Walsh (Kley) must return home to confront his troubled past and save his childhood sweetheart Caitlin (Caulfield) and her younger brother Michael (Cormie) from an unrelenting evil that has plagued the town of Darkness Falls for over one hundred and fifty years.

Review:
Darkness Falls. What a horror film. What a badly done horror film that is. While it had signs of originality in the start of the film, the rest is just plain bad. There were many silly and stupid scenes in this film which prevented it from being scary in the rest of it. Lasting only 80 minutes, it only provided about 10 minutes of horror entertainment.

In Darkness Falls Director Jonathan Liebesman clearly did not know what he was doing. He focused on showing the old lady quite a good amount of time to keep you interested and it failed to do so. This was Liebesmans debut as a director. He failed to please myself and I'm sure many other crowds out there.

Darkness Falls had a number of flaws. Sometimes, confusion would even occur because the film would actually test itself. The film just tries to be something, but it ends up being a rehash of many other horror films.

Cheap scares would suit the title better as well. The problems with the scares it tried to deliver was that there was too many of them. The film never built up to the scares nor did it build up to when it was time to reveal the tooth fairy lady.

Another flaw in this film was the acting. Terrible. Emma Caulfield wasn't that bad but needed improvement to make true horror fans believe what they are witnessing. Chaney Kley who played Kyle Walsh in the film was just simply dreadful. It almost wants to make you cry or laugh when you would see him in basically every scene in the movie. And other characters were quite terrible as well. This film wasn't even creative or original because it seemed Libesman did not have a solid script nor a good direction.

Where is my nightlight when I need it most?

When it comes to succeeding in a horror film, originality is the key and there must be originality and good acting for us to believe that the characters are being haunted or are in danger.

This evil tooth fairy really needs to love teeth. Jesus, can you imagine someone hunting you down because your last baby tooth fell out. So the solution is to get you, kill you and take the tooth for her collection. She did this quite a few times in this film because it is basically the plot summary. This is suppose to make you chew slower and bite softer, so you don't have to go through a tragedy as such.

So much hype was put into this movie. I must have seen at least 15 previews on Television for this movie. At only 26 years old Liebesman should take a break and think of better ideas. Perhaps the horror genre is just not for him, we will let him decide on that one.

Darkness Falls had a decent beginning, a very messy middle and a terrible ending. To add to that, the acting was bad and the story as well. There is more bad than good in this film. The one star goes mostly to the beginning of this film. I don't recommend this movie at all.

Darkness Falls

Rating: